After 30 years of excuses,this is the year I'm repeating my 1981 odyssey.This log is a record of that trip.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Prologue

I'm not ready!!!

It was only - what? - nine months ago that I decided that 2013 was
finally and decidedly the year to repeat my 1981 bicycle odyssey across
the country: a decision reinforced by the announcement
that this year would be the 50th anniversary of my high school, and that
there would be a combined reunion of the first four classes or so.
There's nothing like a definite target to spur one into action. After
all, that worked with our government and the sequester, didn't it?
<wry smile>

But - nine months later - I'm not ready!

Not that I'm a procrastinator, mind you. A procrastinator puts things
off. And I just have too much to do. So of course there are some
things that don't get done. And that's not the same, is it? Is It?

We moved to Seattle in 1983, two years after my first TransAmerica
trip. We intended to repeat it together, some summer. But we were both
getting settled into a new home and new jobs, and the idea was put on
temporary hold.

Then the kids came along. Well, we thought, that would make it
interesting: we could do the ride on a tandem, and pull them in a
trailer. After all, we'd done a number of tandem rallies that way.

But then they got bigger. Couldn't stop it. What the hey - we'll put them on the backs of tandems instead.

One more opportunity missed. Time marched on, and the kids graduated from high school, and...

...and Christopher graduated from college! Wow! Perfect time to do it
with him! He's free, likes to bike, and doesn't have a job yet. But -
darn - I do. Boss says, yeah, that sounds like a fun trip. But company
policy doesn't allow us to grant extended leaves. So you'll have to
quit. Okay, I say, what are the chances I'll be hired back? Pretty
good, he says.

Sigh. I shudda done it. But - this was the time of the dot.com bust
and the start of the Great Recession. Would our company be caught up in
it, and commence layoffs? I figured that discretion was the better
part of something-or-other, and decided to forego the trip.

Big mistake. I would have been rehired. And would have had a great father-son experience.

So here we are. Monday the 13th of May was the targeted departure
date. I figured that would leave plenty of time for me to cycle from
Seattle to Yorktown, VA, then back to Niles, MI, arriving in time for
the reunion. But that target has slipped, one day at a time, and the
end of the week is looming. As of now, I'll have to cycle an extra four
miles every day to compensate for my tardiness.

Tomorrow's the day. He says. In a way, it's the perfect day to leave.
It's Bike to Work day. (I'll be working my buns off.) DeAnne will be
manning (womanning?) the Bike to Work station at the east entrance to
the Mt. Baker ped/bike tunnel. Cool. I'm aiming to be all packed and
loaded tonight so that, in the morning, I can help her set up, and then
take off from that scenic overlook.

Sorry about the tardiness of my blog posts. There are a couple of reasons for that: (1) At the end of the day, I'm usually too tired to write about what I did. I gotta get off the bike earlier. (2) Sometimes I'm in a place with lousy wi-fi and cellular service, and even if I can post text, sometimes I can't upload pics. Beats me why.

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Map Notes

Unfortunately, the mobile version of Blogger does not permit the placement of photos within the text, nor titling of the photos. You will just have to guess which photos go with what text.

You can see a Google Maps route map associated with a daily post by clicking on the first link (up there in the from-to text). However, note that Google Maps on Android does not permit the customization of maps, so these maps do not reflect the route I actually took: they show only what Google Maps thinks is an appropriate bike route between the starting and ending spots.

The real routes are provided in the TransAmerica Trail maps published by the Adventure Cycling Association, information from which is used here by their kind permission. You can, of course, use these Google Maps as a starting point for planning your own trip. But keep in mind that the Google Maps routes do not always coincide with the TransAmerica Trail maps, and of course do not show all the extras that are included on those maps. I strongly recommend that you purchase the Adventure Cycling maps. They contain much more detailed information about the routes, and include history, points of interest, lodging/camping information, and emergency contacts for the areas through which you will be passing.

About Me

After forty years bustin' my butt as a computer programmer, I up and quit. What comes after retirement? Read my blogs and find out.
Note that, unless you know me personally, they will bore you silly. And if you do know me personally, it won't be much better.